Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Part 15

A Privy Councillor, an old man, looking at his children, became a radical himself.

A newspaper: "Cracknel."

The clown in the circus--that is talent, and the waiter in the frock coat speaking to him--that is the crowd; the waiter with an ironical smile on his face.

Auntie from Novozybkov.

He has a rarefaction of the brain and his brains have leaked into his ears.

"What? Writers? If you like, for a s.h.i.+lling I'll make a writer of you."

Instead of translator, contractor.

An actress, forty years old, ugly, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than that actress.

The doctor said to me: "If," says he, "your const.i.tution holds out, drink to your heart's content." (Gorbunov.)

Carl Kremertartarlau.

A field with a distant view, one tiny birch tree. The inscription under the picture: loneliness.

The guests had gone: they had played cards and everything was in disorder: tobacco smoke, sc.r.a.ps of paper, and chiefly--the dawn and memories.

Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.

Why do trees grow and so luxuriantly, when the owners are dead?

The character keeps a library, but he is always away visiting; there are no readers.

Life seems great, enormous, and yet one sits on one's _piatachok_.[1]

[Footnote 1: The word means five kopecks and also a pig's snout.]

Zolotonosha?[1] There is no such town! No!

[Footnote 1: The name of a Russian town, meaning literally "Gold-carrier."]

When he laughs, he shows his teeth and gums.

He loved the sort of literature which did not upset him, Schiller, Homer, etc.

N., a teacher, on her way home in the evening was told by her friend that X. had fallen in love with her, N., and wanted to propose. N., ungainly, who had never before thought of marriage, when she got home, sat for a long time trembling with fear, could not sleep, cried, and towards morning fell in love with X.; next day she heard that the whole thing was a supposition on the part of her friend and that X.

was going to marry not her but Y.

He had a liaison with a woman of forty-five after which he began to write ghost stories.

I dreamt that I was in India and that one of the local princes presented me with an elephant, two elephants even. I was so worried about the elephant that I woke up.

An old man of eighty says to another old man of sixty: "You ought to be ashamed, young man."

When they sang in church, "Now is the beginning of our salvation," he ate _glavizna_ at home; on the day of St. John the Baptist he ate no food that was circular and flogged his children.[1]